Falling off Bikes and DACA

Thor and I like riding our bikes. Last night, I skidded out on the downward slope of a gravel incline and went over my handlebars into a metal railing and tried to mop up all the rocks with my leg meat. As quickly as I could, I scrambled up and off the bike path, Thor hurrying to catch up and make sure I wasn’t too badly damaged. It was pretty grim.

I ended up looking like someone had taken a cheese grater to my legs, and forearms, and had to take off a sock to staunch the blood flow from the chunk I took out of my palm, but we rode another quarter mile to the water fountains where I could clean up some before heading back home. We were nearly three miles away from the house at that point, and I was not looking forward to the trek. But, what else do you do? No way out but through.

I told the kid, as blood ran down into a puddle in my shoe, making a squish sound as I pedaled, “If you’re going to bike regularly, eventually something like that is going to happen to you. I’m not going to lie. Right this second, I hurt like fuck, but we can’t stop. We have to keep going. And if you ever fall like that and you don’t have your phone, you can’t stop. You have to keep going no matter how bad it hurts. I want you to keep in mind what you saw me do, how I reacted, and I want you to not be afraid of falling or of getting back up.

You can’t just lie in the road because then you run the risk of someone hurting you worse by accident, and them getting hurt–you have to get up and get out of the way, then get home because otherwise, you can be the start of a bad domino effect.”

I told him about a couple of other falls I’d taken, bad enough that I had to walk my bike back home because both the bike and I were too wrecked to ride, trying to really impress that the important thing is making it back home before you break down.

We rode home, and I went into the bathroom and cried because…oh my god. So painful.

Jeff Sessions just announced the rescission of DACA, and for a lot of people, it’s like going over the handlebars of a swiftly moving bicycle. Teeth are coming out on impact with this one. It’s bad. It hurts like fuck. Let’s take a second to acknowledge that hurt, then let’s act. Let’s get out of the road. Let’s take off a sock and cover up the worst cuts. Let’s find a place to clean off. Then, let’s get back on the road and pedal like crazy toward home. Home being the place where children brought to this country, who have grown up in the US for all intents and purposes as much citizens as my own born-here baby, have assurances of continued safety and a path to legal citizenship.

Our next step is to contact our representatives in Congress and demand that they protect our Dreamers. And once we’ve done that, we can go into the bathroom and cry. Then, we’ve got to rinse and repeat until those children and adult-children are safe from being deported to countries they haven’t seen (for some) since infancy.

I just learned a fancy new way to accomplish this and started my love affair with the deliciously subversive sounding Resistbot.

Text the word “Resist” to 50409 and Resistbot will connect with you and help you contact your representatives. I asked my Senators, as a citizen of the United States and a proud Texan to strive to save DACA through congressional action. I asked them not to let our Dreamers down.

If you are reading this and you are a Dreamer, your bike might be too wrecked to get yourself home. Hop on mine. I’ll pedal. You rest until you feel strong enough to fight again. I know a bunch of people with bikes. We’ll work together for you.